


Feels Good To Be Me Right Now

by sevdrag (seventhe), seventhe



Series: Sev's Commission Run 2020 [1]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A lot of them - Freeform, Awesome Clint Barton, Clint Fights The Avengers, Clint Has A Good Time, Clint [Redacted]s The Avengers, Drunken Shenanigans, M/M, One Night Stands, Time Loop, Time Shenanigans, Wine Cheese and Juice Nights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22980394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/sevdrag, https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/seventhe
Summary: Clint might be stuck in a time loop, but it'shistime loop, and he's gonna have a good time no matterwhat.(Clint Barton, one repeating day, and the millions of things you can do with twenty-four hours. Now complete!)
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Clint Barton/Sam Wilson, Clint Barton/Thor, Clint Barton/Tony Stark, Clint Makes Himself The Bicycle
Series: Sev's Commission Run 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651501
Comments: 91
Kudos: 324





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/gifts).



> This is entirely the fault of Arson / hawksonfire and the rowdy crowd at BDBD, who collectively drove us to the conversation that led to this fic.
> 
> It's likely to be 8 chapters, and I'll update every few days. (Unlike my OTHER WIPs, this fic has been written!, and I just need to tweak the ending!)

The alarm goes off, that combination of vibration he can feel through the floor and the stupid shrill tone JARVIS had designed to hit his remaining frequencies just perfectly, and Clint swears his way through the alphabet as he fumbles for the mobile device.

Huh. Nope, it’s on the floor; he remembers he did the same thing yesterday. Goddamn sleep terrors, making’ him fumble around to check the time, turn the light on, grasp at the phone knowing he had a line out… Shit, his aids are on the floor too, his hand discovers, just the same as yesterday. This better not be becoming a motherfuckin’ pattern. He doesn’t need this shit. 

Just as he’s hanging more of his upper body weight over the bed to fumble around for the second air, Lucky comes barreling in - just like fuckin’ _yesterday,_ can’t a man catch a _break_ \- and nearly topples Clint out of bed; he’s stuck there, Lucky standing in the small of his back and both hands braced on the floor, the goddamned alarm still pealing in the shrill of what’s left of his hearing and his back - _still_ \- aching from the fight yesterday.

“You know what, Luck,” Clint says out loud. “Maybe today I’m just goin’ back to bed.” If the day’s gonna start off just like yesterday’s did, it might be worth it to just give JARVIS and the rest of the team the middle finger and crawl back under the covers, with added warmth from dog this time, and wait out what was a particularly boring, depressing, entirely not-worth-it sort of day.

But, fuck it. Of course he don’t. He’s Clint Barton, and he can’t sit here if there’s a chance other people will be out there causing a ruckus in his name.

———

He heads into the kitchen, where - _once again_ \- some motherfucker has only left half of a cup’s worth of burnt sludge in the bottom of the pot. 

“Look,” Clint yells at the empty room, “it isn’t just me that hates this shit. Tony does too. And this is Tony’s tower, alright?” He pours the bubbling stuff into a mug and, against all common sense, drinks a sip. It’s awful, but he had the same thing yesterday and the day before and didn’t die, so. Whatever. “It’s obvious nobody in this tower cares what _I_ think,” he mutters to JARVIS as he - sort of perfunctorily - rinses out the pot and refills the coffee maker, “but maybe they’ll care what Tony thinks.”

It isn’t every night he stays at the Tower, but recent activity’s been real big and real bad, so he’s been here with Lucky for about two weeks now. Kate’s off monitoring the outskirts with her own gang, but there are enough people here to take care of Lucky that it’s probably better that way. Obviously his room here’s better than Bed Stuy, but Bed Stuy’s home, so it’s got Clint feeling a bit unbalanced.

Or maybe it’s the bullshit he’d fallen through the day before: remnants of some asshole’s spell that had planted him down arse-first in the grass of Central Park, feeling covered in a million tiny spiderwebs, the kind of fine magical shit that took even Wanda a half-hour to pick off of his skin. The magic hadn’t seemed to leave anything but the fall had absolutely wrenched the middle of his back - which was a goddamned important part - and Clint is absolutely determined to whine until someone gives him either painkillers or a Thor-style massage. (It doesn’t even have to be Thor; he’s that generous a teammate.)

But just like yesterday, the coffee pot brews in silence, and Clint decides to stage the same sort of rebellion and is just trying to leave the common room with the entire pot in hand when he hears a door open.

_Fuck me,_ Clint thinks, turning around with a groan. _Is it like, repeat-Clint’s-worst-day-o-clock?_

It’s Steve, of course, followed by Sam, both of them flushed and sweaty, cheeks pink and chests heaving. Of course Clint looks; he did yesterday and he’ll do the same tomorrow. Steve catches him and makes that kind of disappointed face that makes Clint wonder whether Captain America is really an army soldier or a grandmother.

“That’s not very sportsmanlike,” he says to Clint, and Clint wrinkles his nose.

“I swear to fuck you said the same exact thing yesterday,” he tells Steve, even while he brings the pot back. “You need better insults.”

“Naw, man,” Sam drawls as he pulls out the orange juice. “Yesterday he just gave you the disappointed eyes and you brought the pot right back without sayin’ anything.”

“You have been hanging around with old people too long,” Clint tells him, because most of his memory’s shot to hell but he remembers yesterday pretty clearly. “I diagnose you with Associated Old Brain. You’ve picked it up by osmosis.”

“You know what osmosis is?” Sam murmurs as he tries to cut back his cheeky grin, and Clint punches his shoulder on the way past. It’s okay when Sam does it cause Sam only had his GED for a long time before he went back in for his counseling bit, and Clint can totally respect that. Plus Sam is cute and that goes a long way.

“Sam,” says Steve.

“Clint,” says Natasha, who has just entered the room with mug in hand, looking mutinous. Clint fills her glass and takes a moment to wonder when they all became so _predictable:_ this literally feels like the same day as yesterday. Maybe it’s something about the way they all come together here, in Avengers Tower; the way they all buddy up when things look rough, and just slot into certain ways. Clint thinks; based on this display, pretty soon…

“Rogers,” Tony yells, and Clint can’t help but snort because seriously, this is all _routine_ apparently. “Out of my _way,_ my coffee alert went off.”

Clint considers telling Tony he’s getting as predictable as Captain America because he’s starting to think Tony just yells the same thing every morning and he’s usually too caffeine-deprived to notice. Tony somehow has an alert on every coffee pot and tends to follow the fresh coffee around like a slightly addlepated cat. Clint tucks himself neatly into the corner like he usually does and lets Tony scramble his exhausted-looking person through the crowd and over to the coffee pot as if his own personal world is ending.

“Why don’t you just program your fancy-ass lab espresso machine to make you fresh coffee every three hours?” Clint asks, but he isn’t expecting the world of _booooooooo_ s that come down on his head.

“He’ll never leave,” Steve spits, followed by Natasha saying, “Even the arc reactor can’t take that much caffeine.” In the background someone that sounds suspiciously like Bruce is just howling in laughter, and Clint thinks it’s Sam that’s wheezing, “Rhodey. Somebody go get Rhodey, oh my _god.”_

“Fuck you all,” says Clint, slipping in behind Stark to top off his mug, and he walks away from the full kitchen feeling deeply amused.

———

It isn’t until around lunchtime that Clint starts to get worried.

He spends his morning drinking the lovely coffee, holed up in his room, playing _Farmer’s Daughter 3_ on his tablet. It’s a terrible game he would never play in public, except that it’s an _awesome_ game he loves. He’s tiny _Claire,_ who owns a farm, and has a number of suitors in the town he has to negotiate with to grow his farm and progress in the game. At this point, Clint’s torn between goth girl Lily, all-around buff dad Mack, and slightly questionable but fun Tory. _That’s odd,_ he thinks, _I thought I did the Mack date yesterday;_ but he does it again, and sighs over how absolutely adorable Mack’s little pixels are.

When the Avengers alarm goes off he can only groan, because it just went off McFuckin’ yesterday, and god forbid they catch any kind of break. Fumbling at his phone, Clint opens up the management program JARVIS made for him and activates a bunch of shit: the _care for Lucky_ protocol, the _hearing aids activate_ protocol, the _hold all calls from Bed Stuy unless it’s Katie-Kate and she’s screaming_ program as well. It’s the literal reason he’s here in the Tower, though, so he slips the little mobile device into the back pocket of his sweatpants (another unrelated reason Tony Stark is so cool: Avengers sweatpants have _pockets!_ ) and heads down to the command floor.

And when he gets there he has to pause because this is a real sense of _deja vu_ \- and yes, Sam, he knows what that means - with Tony and Rhodey over by the processors, and Steve and Natasha and Sam seated in front of the video wall, which is now showing five different screens of—

“They literally did the same thing yesterday,” Clint snorts. “It didn’t work then. Do they think it’s gonna work now?”

Steve throws him a look. Natasha throws him a _longer_ look: more calculating, her eyes flicking over Clint in that way she has, where Clint thinks she can take in eight unrelated points in his posture and body language and somehow figure out what he would name his first son, or some shit. She’s suspicious, now, and Clint is starting to wonder whether the toll of the battle yesterday made everybody but him _fucking stupid_ for the next twenty-four hours.

“This is similar to their prior attacks,” Steve begins. “Attention here is on Central Park. They seem to be — okay, JARVIS, really? They’re centering on the Zoo?”

“The probability factors based on their current attack pattern indicate that the Zoo is their final reference point.”

Sam snorts. “What do aliens want with the fuckin’ Zoo?”

Except that Clint’s suddenly heading forwards towards the screen splayed horizontal in front of Captain America, watching as Tony’s drones and satellites and other technical shit picks up on the placement of each of the strange tiny aliens, and—

“Ooookay,” Clint says slowly. “None of you remember them doing this exact same shit yesterday?’

Eyes turn to Clint, carefully, disbelievingly, except that the Avengers have had one too many weird situations like this to absolutely toss Clint out on his ass. He’s kind of glad for that. 

“Look,” he says. Obviously there’s something going on with his memory, and it’s related to this attack, so he might as well take advantage. “I fuckin’ hate magic, okay, but somehow between Bed-Stuy and here somebody put some memories in my brain of us doin’ exactly this. We zoom in, perimeter evacuates civilians, active team heads in. They hit the zoo in weird places, pulling some kind of sample out of like half a dozen goddamn animals, then leave. No real fighting. Look, even their vanguard is the same.”

Everyone’s looking at Clint like he’s taken one too many laps around the crazy farm, but Steve isn’t; Steve’s learnt that they have to let these things into play, over time, and he’s learning how to do it. “Right,” he says. “Perimeter team is Bruce, Sam, Wanda. Get in there and clear the civilians out. We’ll form two active teams. Alpha is myself, Clint, Natasha, to approach and monitor, engage only if necessary. Beta is Tony, Rhodey, Pietro, and that’s if Clint’s vision is wrong and this is gonna escalate. Vision stays at base with JARVIS to call out patterns and run a theoretical prediction on whether Clint’s thing is right or not.”

There’s one name Steve doesn’t call, but everyone lets it pass; it isn’t like the guy’s here consistently anyway, and certainly isn’t active, but Clint meets Nat’s eyes and knows they’re both thinking it.

“We got this,” Steve says, and it’s the same thing he says every time but that doesn’t make it any less admirable. “Avengers, suit up.”

———

The thing is: 

—the thing is, the battle is the same. Almost identical. To the point where Clint swears he’s made the same path through the trees as he did earlier, swinging through as reliably as goddamned Spider-Man, knowing before he lands where he needs to shoot each type of arrow to hinder their forces. It isn’t a thing he’s memorized, no, but Clint’s instincts are honed enough that he does all of the calculating in his head without thought, which leaves _just enough_ brainpower to figure out that the approach is much easier this time cause it feels like he’s _done this before._

Okay, so, whatever these little fuckers are doing, they’ve messed with his head. And Clint has a pre-prepared speech on how he feels about _that shit,_ and it’s a lot of screaming and a few too many arrows that make things explode.

He swallows it down, though, because he isn’t going to be the one going crying to med bay afterwards, and if these weird little assholes want to be predictable, well, Clint’s happy to finally have a mission he can file into the _easy_ column.

———

The next day, Clint wakes up even _more_ pissed off than before, because his mobile device is on the ground _again,_ along with his aids, _a-fucking-gain,_ and Lucky fucking jumps on his sore ass _a-mother-fucking-cock-sucking-gain,_ and Clint is not paid anywhere near enough for any of this fucking bullshit.

He takes the time to be different: a shower. Different clothing. He stretches. But the siren song of caffeine is calling, so he heads out to the kitchen.

Of course it’s the same goddamn situation, but again, no one in this entire fucking tower has the respect for coffee that they should.

It’s when Sam and Steve come in, flushed and sweaty, glorious and glowing, that Clint says, “Aw, hell, no.” He still looks them up and down, though, cause he is an equal opportunity appreciator, and he’s not going to pass this up.

“That’s not very sportsmanlike,” says Steve, and Clint swears and throws his coffee cup into the wall.

“Oh my god,” he says, “I’m stuck in a time loop.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint takes on the Avengers.

It isn’t like they haven’t talked about it before. Unfortunately, time loops are a thing in their sort of business, alongside doppelgängers, time travel, and alternate dimensions. Clint’s been through SHIELD’s trainings on all this shit, and he’s sat through Steve’s (and Tony’s) Avengers versions as well. (Steve’s were very practical; Tony’s included phrases like, “You might as well enjoy yourselves. Rob my savings account and go to Vegas, lads.”)

It takes Clint an entire day to, sort of, come to terms with it. He took an entire day to fuck with people, just to make sure they wouldn’t remember anything the next day. No one did. He stole Nat’s gloves (a killing offense) and dodged her for twenty-four hours, and woke up back in his bed just like the first day. He’d messed with Tony’s workshop. Nothing anyone had remembered.

By the sixth day of confirming this, Clint had grinned. He knew most people panicked when stuck in a time loop, but he had a different kind of opinion: he knew he couldn’t get out of it himself, so, as he reckoned as fair with the rules of the universe, he was owed a goddamned good time.

———

“Alright,” Clint announced that morning, over coffee, after Steve and Sam had entered and after Tony had invaded with his coffee run. “Guess what, y’all.”

There’s some muttering and he doesn’t have to have his hearing aids turned up at all to hear Nat murmur “Chicken butt” in the exact tone she knows will carry to him. He grins at her.

“Has something happened?” Steve looks concerned.

“Grew a brain?” Tony offers. “Balls? Baby’s first wet dream?”

“I’m going to kill you, Stark,” Clint says without malice. “No, look, something… happened. Overnight. I think I have some kind of _magical powers._ ”

Tony snorts, as does Sam. Steve looks even more concerned. Nat grabs at his arm, looking him in the eye.

“Budapest,” he tells her gently. It’s their code word for _trust me._ It doesn’t mean truth; it means, _Have my back._ In this case, he’s probably stretching the case somewhat, but she won’t remember enough to forgive him. 

“I had a bunch of dreams,” Clint begins, and then says: “Fuck it. I wanna go spar. No holds barred, no holding back, show me what you’ve got.”

“Clint,” says Bruce, approaching from behind. “I don’t think…”

“I have to find out,” Clint shoots back, “and if y’all spar me like the fragile human I usually am, I won’t know, will I?”

It’s obvious that no one likes the idea, but it’s Steve that says, “Yeah, okay, Clint. Let’s spar.”

———

Captain America is _definitely_ hitting harder than usual. Clint’s going to be covered in the long lines of shield-stripe bruises afterwards. He’s engaged now: his bow-staff against Cap’s shield and fists. He can literally feel himself bruising, but this is the hardest Cap has ever gone on him, and that’s thrilling, in a way.

Besides, he got a couple shots in. Cap’s limping due to the arrow into the back of his left knee, and there’s a shaft sticking out of his left shoulder that leaves the shield less effective than before. Which is good, because Cap had whipped that thing around the walls and into Clint’s own flesh so hard he might have fractured his — whatever the bone is that’s in the forearm.

But still: Cap’s holding back. Clint knows because he isn’t dead yet. He’s left Steve an increasing number of openings and Steve continues to press him, rather than defeat him. It’s exhilaratingly better than any other time they’ve sparred, but this isn’t Steve letting loose.

The fight ends when Clint gets a strike through to Cap’s head, rings his bell hard enough to sting, and Cap instinctively raises the shield before ...dropping it and turning away, signaling that it’s over.

“That’s impressive, Hawkeye.” Cap looks back at him, and looks strangely surprised and proud in a way that makes Clint feel a bit mixed up.

“Yeah,” Clint breathes, as his body cools off and he realizes he has bruises across his bruises. “Who’s next?”

The silence isn’t so much awkward as it is pensive. Curious. 

“Tony,” asks Clint. “Gimme a zap.”

“No can do, Hawkeye.” Tony shakes his head. “That’ll put you out for weeks.”

“Nah.” Clint grins. “I’m magic now, remember?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Steve says, tentatively, probably because in normal circumstances it wouldn’t be a good idea at all. But Clint’s trying to figure out the rules to his abnormal circumstances, so he starts by doing what he does best: being annoying.

“Staaaark,” he whines. “Blast me. Blast my foot. My left foot. I don’t need that.”

“You - don’t _need_ \- a _foot,_ ” Natasha repeats from the sidelines where she’s doing bicep curls, somewhat dreamily. “Clint, you already trip over everything.”

“ _Blast my big toe,”_ Clint tells Tony. “Do it. Do it do it do it do it—”

“Don’t you dare, Tony,” says Steve, which ends up being the absolute wrong - or right - thing to say.

Tony calls out his gauntlet, flicks on the repulsor, fiddles with it a bit, and takes aim. Clint helpfully raises his left foot - balance is nothing the Amazing Hawkeye ever worries about - and Tony flashes his fingers, releasing what looks like the weakest pulse of energy an Iron Man armor’s ever shot, including the one made in the cave.

It still hurts like bloody hell. Clint crumples instantly, although he only presses that foot down for a second before realizing standing on it hurts even _more,_ and the throbbing pain of every nerve being alight causes him to topple over. He makes some kind of weak whimpering sound and cradles the foot to his chest, aware he’s being a right dumbass.

———

“Why did you do that,” Natasha says, later on when Clint’s hopped up on pain pills in the infirmary and Dr. Cho’s latest and greatest robot concoction is working on the sole of his foot. “You aren’t magic at all.”

“Nope,” Clint says, enjoying the way the _p_ rolls out of his mouth. This is a _great idea._ Next time he wakes up he should injure itself immediately and spend the day on the _good juice._ “Tasha, I’m caught in a time loop.”

“No, you’re not,” Nat says gently. “You’re in the infirmary, stoned out of your mind on trimorphodine.”

“Noooo,” Clint tells her. “I mean. Outside this.” His hand wave is sloppy enough to encompass the entire world, but he assumes Nat gets the point. “Lived this day like a million days. Times. Six? _Millions,_ Nat. Gotta figure out the _rules._ ”

To her credit, Nat’s eyes only widen a little bit. She’s been in the same trainings as Clint; she knows the same information. “Budapest?” Nat asks, and Clint nods.

She reaches out to grasp his knee, above where the beams of light are working away at his foot. “I’m worried about you,” she tells him. “If you’re messing with me, you just injured yourself for no reason. And if you’re really in a time loop…” Natasha just levels a look at him, and Clint shrugs.

“I know, I knowwww, and once I know all the rules I’ll figure out how to get out.” Clint gives her what was meant to be an award-winning smile; it feels all wobbly through the haze of the drugs. “Just havin’ a bit of fun first.”

“Fun,” Natasha repeats, stupefied, and gives his foot another pointed look. “This is risky, Clint. What if nothing heals in your spell?”

“Then I let it loop like a million times until I’m better,” Clint says lazily. He does a hand wave again, but he isn’t sure what for. The trimorphodine is dragging him downwards, into sleep.

———

The alarm goes off, that combination of vibration he can feel through the floor and the stupid shrill tone JARVIS had designed to hit his remaining frequencies just perfectly, and Clint bolts upright - back muscles complaining at the sudden strain - and tears off the blankets to look at his left foot.

It’s fine. Perfect condition. Except his toenails, he should probably — _It’s fine._

Clint grins.

———

It turns out that it’s Thor that kills him for real, the first time.

Clint’s managed to develop his story of being “magical” over the last few days, armed with memories of the way Steve and Tony fight. With enough practice he can get Steve into some kind of draw; Steve isn’t going full out on Clint, not yet, but Clint can trick him into a tougher fight every time, as he learns more about Cap’s moves. As for Tony, it’s much more fun to make the Iron Man armor fight him like a normal person, up until Clint pushes a bit too hard and Tony gets frustrated. Then, usually, Clint gets the _good drugs_ again, and wakes up the next - same - morning, ready to go.

It’s funny, though, because the time loop must not be exactly fixed. Clint figures he’s done about twenty of these days, and finally, the mornings have started to gradually change. He wakes up to his mobile and his aids on the table, now, and Lucky comes with him to breakfast, and — well, Thor’s always been there, in the background, but Clint has managed to vary things enough that Thor’s willing to spar with him for the first time.

Which ends _horribly._ Clint gets a couple shots off with his bow, and then he folds it into the bow-staff, but Thor just lifts the hammer into the air and calls down the thunder, lightning forking out of the ceiling of the gym and down through Mjolnir, through Thor’s wrists and ribs and then out to Clint, striking him dead down.

Clint feels the entire thing. The force of Thor’s power hits him in the chest and there’s this heavy gasp of not-breathing, as if Clint’s underwater except the water is acid and burning in his chest, and he can feel his heart stutter, flip, thud—

—he feels the last few beats of it, the rest of his body in agony, fingertips going numb and legs folding; he can hear Nat’s yell, that high pitch she only uses when—

—Clint’s heart gives up its last two pulses and then stops, and Clint’s chest erupts in fire, and he—

———

The alarm goes off, on the table next to his bedside, and Clint jolts upright in bed, gasping in air that doesn’t _hurt,_ breaths that don’t burn, the feeling in his lungs tasting sweet and fresh. 

“Well,” Clint says, when Lucky barrels in and snuggles up, flopping across Clint’s lap. “Let’s maybe not do that again.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint [redacted]s the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, this is the chapter that earns that rating and those tags... hopefully also the chapter people enjoy the most so far. I blame the Bad Decisions Buddies Discord nearly entirely for this.

The alarm goes off, on the table next to his bedside, and Clint rolls over to smash at it, groping for his aids at the same time.

He’s gone twenty-seven of these days. Some of them he can’t bring himself to do anything wild or different; he ends up either playing along or playing sick, since he knows how the day and the meals and the battle will end up. But after twenty-seven days, Clint figures it’s time to try something new. Fighting was alright. It’s time to have some new fun with the Avengers, since he has pretty thoroughly proven that nothing he does in this time loop remains in anyone’s brain except his afterwards.

Clint hasn’t picked up on any of the signs saying he needs to solve this puzzle any time soon, nor has he detected any other kinds of big change, and — he’s still sulking. If he’s going to be stuck in the goddamn time loop, he’s going to enjoy it, Clint Barton style.

———

He starts with Tony.

Knowing what he does about the typical mornings in this particular script, Clint is prepared to angle himself for best effect. He ends up strolling out of his room, a particular roll to his hips, no shirt and only low-slung sweatpants he knows have a bit of a gratuitous hole in the seat. He’s messed his hair for particular bed-head effect; he’s seen Tony looking before, and he knows what sorts of things catch his eye. 

Clint lets the normal morning unfold; he says nothing about sparring at all, simply leans back into the kitchen island at an angle meant to accentuate his hipbones, creeping out of the slowly collapsing edge of the sweats. Tasha looks at him and rolls her eyes, but Clint just smiles at her, and she leaves him be. 

Clint knows he’s caught Tony’s eye, but to his surprise, he’s caught Sam’s eye as well; there’s a moment where Clint debates how lucky he can possibly get, but then he decides that this first time he should probably play it safe. He just leans against the counter, and drinks more coffee than he should, and laughs at both of their jokes.

It’s Tony that makes the first move and Clint isn’t really surprised: Sam’s hotter than hell and Sam knows it, but Sam also works in patterns, moves with rules. Tony Stark has the advantage of such a checkered, rumored, paint-splattered past that he can say nearly anything, knowing he has enough ammunition to defend any of it before it descends into anything too problematic.

Sam laughs, not knowing whether they’re serious or not, and Clint grins at him as he leaves, while crossing the kitchen in a way he knows lets the sweats sag lower on his hips. Usually dressing like a hobo doesn’t work out that well for him, but Clint knows what he looks like in pants that are about to fall off, and he has one advantage he will acknowledge: he knows Tony Stark is curious about almost everything and everybody.

At that part it isn’t exactly hard to draw Tony in. Clint flirts ruthlessly; he normally isn’t this deliberate, mainly because he hates rejection, but in this case he knows there’s nothing to lose if he fucks this up except maybe a couple of embarrassing hours waiting in the vents for the day to reset itself. And even then he’ll be able to try again tomorrow with a different angle, so really, for once in Clint Barton’s life flirting is a win-win situation.

Tony’s Tony, of course, and he calls Clint on it the second they’re alone. Clint’s cocked a hip against the counter and is sucking down his second cup of coffee when Tony asks, “What’s with the gun show, Barton?”

Clint grins against the rim of his mug. “Can’t a guy show off for attention once in a while?”

Tony snorts. “Barton, you need attention like I need another billion dollars.” It’s said sarcastically, a bit flirty, and Clint smirks.

“Maybe I’m looking for a different kind of attention,” he tells Tony, and cocks his hips so that his terrible sweats sink down another centimeter along his hipbones. 

“Not sure whether I should be flattered or insulted,” Tony replies, but his eyes are tracing out Clint’s biceps and chest and lingering on the hemline.

“You can be both,” Clint says, “but are you _interested._ ”

Tony stalks over, reaching out to trail warm fingertips along the line of Clint’s hipbone. It’s funny, because Tony’s so much shorter than Clint is, but he has this _presence_ that starts to overwhelm Clint almost immediately as Tony suddenly centers his entire focus onto Clint’s lips.

“What’s on offer?” This Tony is suddenly smooth, suave, tempting; Clint is _into this._ The only point they’re touching is the faint pressure of three of Tony’s fingerprints on his hip and yet the air is full of that sweet tension that always gets Clint desperately turned on. “Roll in the hay? Let off some steam?”

“No pressure, no strings,” Clint murmurs, shivering delightfully as he realizes this is _working._ He moves himself infinitesimally closer to Tony, bending so that their faces are close. “Just a bit of fun.”

Tony’s smirk spreads across his face, devastatingly confident, and Clint’s eyes flutter at it. “I’m more than just a bit of fun, Barton.”

Size joke. _Sex joke._ This is gonna be awesome. “Same,” Clint says, and leans even closer. “You up for it?”

Tony answers by tipping his head up, probably stretching a bit on his toes, and matching Clint’s lips with his own. Clint shouldn’t be surprised at how forcefully Tony kisses; Tony’s a man of decisions, always decisive, moving with surety through his own world, all forward momentum. Clint has height on him but it’s entirely clear that Tony’s taking charge here. Tony’s hands come up to tug at Clint’s hair, pulls Clint down into the kiss, his tongue already working hard, fast patterns into Clint’s mouth. Clint rests his hands on Tony’s waist, his fingers smoothing over the other man’s tee, tugging Tony’s hips closer. Clint’s already half-hard just from Tony’s ridiculous _mouth._

Tony breaks apart for a second, those clever brown eyes taking in every inch of Clint’s flushed face. “Always been curious about you, Barton,” he murmurs, and then pulls away, tugging at Clint’s sleeve. “JARVIS, the cameras?”

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS says from the ceiling, and Clint follows.

His room is closer, even though it’s a mess, and Lucky’s asleep on the couch so Clint tugs Tony into his bed, on top of him, pulling Tony’s mouth back down to his. “Curious about what?” Clint has to ask as they separate for breath.

“Think about it,” says Tony, already working his hands over Clint’s chest; Clint can feel the calluses, the burns and the missing fingerprints and all the places Tony’s given up skin and blood working on some project. It’s rough and unpredictable and Clint loves it. “We work on a team of insanely attractive people. I can’t be the only one curious about _assembling_ in the sack.”

Clint’s hands dip beneath Tony’s tee, run up his spine, and Tony makes this gratuitous noise in the back of his throat, unashamed and needy. “Oh, you aren’t,” Clint answers, breathy. He tugs Tony’s shirt off over his head and immediately pulls Tony’s skin onto his. “I’ve always wondered.”

Tony laughs into Clint’s neck as he worries at a spot with pressure, tongue and teeth making Clint tilt his head back into the pillows. “What, are you gonna sample the buffet, here? I thought I was special.”

“You’re special right now,” Clint tells him, and laves his tongue over Tony’s nipple. A sound catches in the other man’s throat and Tony’s hips grind down into Clint’s. They’re both very obviously into this; Clint can feel the hard hot friction of Tony through his threadbare sweatpants, and he trails his palms slowly down Tony’s torso to open the button on his jeans. “You know you’re hot, you don’t have to pretend to be shy.”

“Of course I am,” Tony says, palming Clint’s dick for a second through his sweatpants before attacking his throat. “Didn’t realize it was your kinda hot.”

“Mmmmmmpk,” Clint manages to say, with Tony’s fingers twisting at his nipple.

“Who else,” Tony pants into Clint’s shoulder, where he’s been having a wonderful time biting at Clint’s bicep. “Don’t tell me you and Natasha—”

“No.” Clint’s laughing, though, cause only _Tony Stark_ would want to dirty talk about their teammates while Clint’s dragging Tony’s jeans down his hips to get at his cock. “What, no boxers?”

“I was — _busy,”_ Tony says, devolving into an absolute whine as Clint’s hand wraps around Tony’s cock. “Fuck, Hawkeye, the hands on you, gotta admit, those fingers.”

Clint grins. 

Tony ends up coming all over Clint’s pecs, with two of Clint’s fingers in his ass and his other hand jerking Tony’s cock; it’s an absolute mess, and Tony’s strung out and grinding down on Clint’s hand when he finally comes, thick white ropes that seem to go on forever. Once Tony’s regained his balance he tears - literally - the sweatpants open and swallows Clint’s dick. Tony Stark’s mouth is a goddamn revelation: Clint isn’t actually sure he’s ever come so _fast_ in his life, but it seems that Tony has perfected the art of cocksucking, and he’s literally chuckling as Clint heaves and comes right down Tony’s throat with stars sparkling at the edges of his vision.

“Holy shit,” Clint says eventually, an arm thrown over his face. 

Tony laughs, again, and of course being in bed with Tony Stark is comfortable, a place to laugh and crack jokes and ease the way through the aftermath of some spectacular orgasms. “Well, Hawkeye, if you get curious again…” Tony winks. “I’m up for a repeat.”

Clint clutches at him, sucking at his lower lip, and grins again.

———

Clint does spend a couple days repeating the scenario. What? He’s stuck in a fucking time loop, Tony’s mouth has to be one of the seven wonders of the world, and it’s better than wondering how the fuck he’s ever going to return to the real world.

But as his repeated day slowly evolves, one thing catching up with Clint’s actions at a time, Clint decides no offense to Tony, but it’s time to broaden his horizons.

———

He isn’t expecting Sam to be this frantic, this _filthy,_ but wow, what a _surprise._ He’s been shoved up against a wall in one of the hall closets, and Sam’s sucking at his neck and biting like there’s a race on. Clint’s head is thrown back against the wall at the feel of Sam’s hand, currently around both of their dicks, sliding in a messy uneven rhythm that nevertheless is blowing Clint’s mind. 

Sam without a shirt, also, blowing Clint’s mind. God _damn._

“Fuck yeah,” Sam says into his ear, and Clint’s nearly whining in the back of his throat as Sam’s increasingly-slick hand continues to move. Sam’s other hand is in Clint’s hair, tugging his head back to expose Clint’s neck, and Clint feels awfully and exquisitely trapped. “Yeah, you like that, Barton?, yeah, fuck, you feel good; _fuck,_ does it feel good, man, you’re leaking like you want this _bad_ —”

Clint never would have guessed Sam to have this awful, dirty, _wonderful_ mouth. He tears his head away from Sam’s grip to take the other man’s lips again: bruised, swollen, nearly painful but Clint has to suck at his tongue, right now, or he might die. 

Sam comes first, and the punched-out noise he makes and the sudden hot slick have Clint following him over, head tipped back and moaning loudly enough that no one walking past will need to wonder what the hell went on in this closet anyway.

———

“Clint,” Nat says, laughing at him charmingly, “you’re an idiot.”

“I’m needy,” Clint whines, but he’s smiling at her anyway. “I had to ask.”

Nat leans in to kiss his lips, close-mouthed and sweet like she has before. “I appreciate the consideration, as always, honey. I’m flattered.”

Nat’s asexual. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows her even moderately well. Sure, she’s done plenty of seductions in her time, but they’re her _work,_ her _craft,_ and it’s just another tool in her repertoire. 

He and Nat have slept together once before, when Nat was curious about the whole thing, and they had a good enough time; Clint was still in a state of wonder that Nat had trusted him this much with it, and had worked diligently to make it amazing for her, and had been honored when she curled into his arms and said that this cuddling part was as good as what came before. 

“I didn’t want to just leave you off the list,” Clint says, kissing her temple as he draws her in for a hug. They’re better like this; they know each other’s bodies like only true partners can, and there’s nothing sexual that gets in the way of this. Clint loves it. 

Nat sighs into his arms, but then as Clint turns to leave he feels her tense up. “List? Clint, what list?”

———

To Clint’s surprise, Thor is also far easier than expected, which — it might be somewhat flattering, or it might just be the way things work on Asgard; Clint thinks of all of the beautiful Asgardians he’s met, and shudders a little bit.

They’re sparring when it happens. Clint’s careful to not let Thor call the thunder again - that _hurt_ \- but he’s made sure he’s wearing tac pants that fall low on his hips again, and no shirt, and when Thor pins him with that victorious grin Clint lets his body go lax, languid, breathing up into Thor’s mouth.

Thor looks - surprised, for a second - and, then, incredibly intrigued. “There’s a familiar practice on Asgard,” Thor begins, his mouth slowly curving upwards, “to resolve a good spar for both participants. I have yet to find someone here in Midgard who celebrates it.”

It’s a pretty weighty thing to have the full focus of a god, Clint finds, and simply stretches his body up against Thor’s, because his tongue is tied and he has no other language.

“Do you,” Thor asks him, even as he lets a fraction of his weight sink down onto Clint, pressing him into the give of the sparring ring floor. “My friend, of the Hawk’s Eye, shall we go to unwind in the aftermath of a fierce fight?”

Clint isn’t sure it was a fierce fight. He isn’t sure of anything right now except that he wants to become acquainted with this Asgardian practice more than anything. He nods, bites his lip, wets his mouth with his tongue.

He _really_ isn’t sure how they end up back in the rooms Tony put aside for Thor - maybe teleportation is a part of this ritual? - because he’s distracted, kissing the god of thunder. Thor isn’t part of Clint’s reality, really, and he can feel all of that brewing behind Thor’s lips and skin: the potential, electricity building up inside, and Clint can suck it from Thor’s skin as he explores some truly marvelous chest muscles, knowing his tongue has to trace every single one for a reason far beyond anything he can understand.

Thor is gentle, enthusiastic, generous, focused: all the things he is on the battlefield he brings against Clint’s body, and once they’re naked against each other Clint decides he absolutely has to ride that dick or he’ll literally never forgive himself. He ends up coming twice: once on Thor’s fingers, lit up inside with the tingle-shock of Thor’s skin, and once right after Thor bellows his own completion and grabs at Clint’s hips hard enough to bruise, holding him in place while Thor’s cock sputters inside him, spewing such hot wet volume Clint can _feel it—_

His second orgasm always knocks him out a bit, but he wakes up spread across Thor’s chest, the god beneath him snoring like a human. Something about that’s oddly endearing.

———

Clint wouldn’t admit it to anyone, not even Nat, but he repeats _that_ day a number of times as well. It’s his fucking time loop; if he wants to use it to have a number of spectacular orgasms he’ll remember his entire life even if he can’t feel them the next day, that is entirely his prerogative. Everyone has enthusiastically consented, after all. Clint can’t help but preen a little.

He’s dealt with enough shit in his life. He’s earned this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has some _real_ fun.

“Jay,” Clint whines, standing outside Tony’s tech lab, “come _on.”_

“I can’t let you in, Agent Barton.” The voice is properly JARVIS 2.0, or JARVIS Junior as Tony calls it occasionally, but everyone else has gotten into calling it Jay. With FRIDAY properly in the Iron Man suit and JARVIS now a part of Vision, Tony had to do something, and Jay’s the result. Clint feels like Jay likes him a little more than JARVIS ever did, but he’d also been pretty pissed the entire time the Ultron thing was going on, so there miiiiiight have been a reason for that.

“Jay, c’mon, look. Just let me properly break in, it’ll teach Tony a little bit about security, things he can maybe improve, right?”

“Hawkeye,” says Jay from the speaker, now sounding fond. “It’s absolutely against my protocol to give you access to this lab.”

“It’ll make Tony mad,” Clint tries. “Like, real mad. Hilariously mad.”

“You are not convincing me any further,” Jay tells him.

“Alright,” Clint says. “You want the truth? I’m stuck in a fucking time loop, Jay, and as far as I can tell I’m gonna have to get myself out of it, cause nobody remembers anything when I wake up in the morning, and you know what that is? Frustrating. You know what would make me happy? Taking an illegal joy ride in that nanotech Iron Man suit.”

“A time loop?” Like all of Tony’s other AIs, Jay has been programmed to assist the Avengers whenever necessary. “Would you like me to start running some numbers?”

Clint sighs. “Whatever. You don’t remember the time loop, either, so I’m not sure how much it’ll help, but yeah, knock yourself out.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Couple weeks,” Clint says, and bends to get his lock picks into the complicated keyhole Tony uses for when the power fails. “Three? Four?”

Jay sounds shocked. “What in the world have you been doing for three weeks, Agent Barton?”

“Um,” Clint says.

\------

It turns out that the combination of a time loop distraction _plus_ the understanding that Tony will be angry enough at Clint that he’ll leave all of his other potentially reality-threatening experiments alone today in lieu of kicking some Hawkeye Ass is enough to convince Jay to trip the power momentarily, long enough that Clint’s knowledgeable hands can pick the three locks and get himself into the armor lab.

Each suit has its own pedestal, which is both super cool and very arrogant, but that’s Tony, isn’t it? Clint walks along, looking for one with those little nanoparticle things, cause he’s like an entire city taller than Tony and he doesn’t need the armor falling off. Towards the end there are a couple prototypes with intermediate numbers, and Clint narrows in on one displaying notes and screens from a couple successful test runs before Tony shelved it.

“That should do nicely, Hawkeye,” Jay tells him from above. 

“Cheers,” Clint says, and reaches out for the little metal logo. It’s the size of his palm, how in the hell is it going to--

\--the second he touches it, they’re running up his arm, down his other arm, cascading out down his long legs, the headpiece building rapidly over his skull, and Clint feels a little bit choked and a lot bit surprised and then FRIDAY’s in his ear, saying, “Agent Barton, I don’t have authorization for this.”

“C’mon FRIDAY,” says Clint. “Let’s go have a little fun.”

“You are not authorized to operate this suit,” FRIDAY says, a little prissy this time. 

Clint shrugs as the faceplate closes over him. This display is _unreal._ It’s a good thing he’s used to following battle details from a distance and having multiple inputs in his ear; it’s close to overwhelming, but he thinks he can figure it out. Besides he’s sure FRIDAY felt the shrug. “Maybe not,” he tells her, “but I bet if I jump off the tower wearing this, you’ll make sure I don’t die.”

There’s a long and pointed silence. Clint has no idea how Tony programs these personalities into all of his AI voices. 

“You’re lucky I have protocol,” FRIDAY tells him waspishly, but the rest of the suit lights up in response and suddenly Clint doesn’t give a shit about anything except flying.

\------

Flying is _awesome._

Clint was safe with the repulsors and the turns and the height for all of thirty seconds before he told FRIDAY, “Fuck it,” and went to climb the Empire State Building using nothing but the air drafts between skyscrapers to get there.

“Sir never flies like this,” FRIDAY tells Clint, but she seems to be warming up to it.

“Tony has style,” Clint says. “But he hasn’t spent his life having to detect currents and drafts and angles with his real human eyeballs.”

FRIDAY sounds surprised. “An interesting point. Do you mind if I record this data for future development?”

Clint grins inside the helmet. “Yeah, go ahead.” It doesn’t really matter that the data won’t make it to the next day. He feels a little smug to be using the armor in a way Tony never has.

That is, until Tony himself pulls up in the most recent model of armor, doing some weird nanoenergy thing that blocks Clint’s way entirely. 

“Barton, I’m going to kill you,” Tony says over the intercom.

Clint laughs, happy with it. “Catch me first, _Iron Man,_ ” he says, and takes off into the sky.

\------

After the nanotech armor, Sam’s wings are -- not a letdown, really; they’re made for different things entirely: more a surprise. The Falcon wings are made for _real fighting_ with a real human person; they’re made to enhance Sam, but to let him approach things in the way he learnt to without any sort of kit or armor. The Iron Man suit turns Tony into something else entirely; the Falcon wings, Clint learns, enhance Sam rather than changing him.

They’re still fun as hell. Clint can cut corners almost _better_ with the Falcon suit -- probably because the wings were made for a normal soldier rather than Tony Stark’s genius-scrambled thought process. And this time when Tony hunts him down in the armor they do a couple laps around Manhattan before going back to where Sam’s probably considering a kill shot.

Worth it.

\------

Repeats of this entertain Clint for an entire week. He’s always been satisfied with his own tech and his own abilities - he doesn’t need to show off - but playing with the team’s fanciest suits has made him wonder whether he needs something of his own. Probably not a full power armor, and probably not what Sam has, but maybe like. A flying bike? Something that could guarantee he always, always had the high ground. Maybe he’ll mention it to Tony, once he’s out of here.

\------

For fun, Clint decides to let a day unfold as normal. He heads out to the kitchen, yells at the coffeepot, watches as Steve and Sam return from working out and Tony comes in to be Tony and everyone else flutters in and out of the kitchen as usual.

It is, in fact, different from the very first day. The time loop’s evolving, bit by bit, and Clint knows that’s probably important to pay attention to for when he has to get himself out of this. He decides to just follow along in the background today, no sexy or supernatural shenanigans, just to see what’s changing. He’s been here for about a month, he thinks; he’ll have to break out eventually. 

The battle unfolds and Clint pays extra attention this time, because it’s obviously something these shitty little creatures did that has him stuck in the loop in the first place. The attack is only subtly different; Clint still manages to remember the big beats, and he’s taking a leap out of a tree he knows he can land because he’s done it approximately thirteen times now when--

\--something comes out of nowhere, huge and dark and it stings as it slams into Clint and drives him into the ground.

\------

Clint wakes up slowly. Achingly. Where’s his alarm? Has he broken out of the loop -- oh, _oh,_ fuck, his head hurts like a goddamn orchestra. This isn’t even a _bed._ Where the _fuck_ is he.

“Hawk Guy awake,” the Hulk says, and Clint feels his last three remaining uninjured brain cells seize up in surprise.

He manages to roll over onto his back, eventually. The big green guy is crouched next to him, staring down. “Hulk worried,” Hulk tells him, and Clint manages a grin that’s no more wobbly than his ankles happen to be at the moment. 

“What happened, big man?”

“You tell me,” Hulk says. Clint sits up, slowly. The Hulk lowers his bulk down to the ground and gives Clint his big fierce grin. Clint’s always surprised at how much the Hulk looks like Banner, but _happy._ He isn’t sure he’s ever seen Bruce grin that widely, which probably says something about Bruce. “Hawk Guy stuck in something.”

“Hawk Guy’s stuck with back pain for a week,” Clint says, groaning as he stretches. “Wait, what?”

Hulk huffs, a happy-animal sound. “Hawk Guy stuck in time thing.”

“Wait,” Clint says. He painfully maneuvers himself around until he’s looking Hulk in the face. “You can tell?”

“Hulk always tell.” The Hulk beats himself proudly on the chest and makes another happy wuffling noise that reminds Clint of Lucky. “Hulk on different axis.”

“I have no idea what that means but I’m glad you get it.” Clint gets his legs crossed under him, bows over them and stretches his arms out front. His back is an entire choreography of bruises. “Can you tell how I got here? Or how I get out?”

When Clint straightens the Hulk is close enough to be a bit alarming, but all that happens is that Hulk sniffs him. “Been here many days.”

“Uh,” Clint says, suddenly and desperately glad that he hadn’t gotten around to propositioning Bruce. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Hand,” Hulk orders, and Clint obediently holds out his left hand, palm up above his head. The Hulk bends to sniff at it, then moves it around a little in the air with one giant finger.

“Little park creatures,” Hulk tells him. “Magic smell like spider tea.”

“Spider tea,” Clint repeats out loud, bemused, until the words tie themselves together. “Oh, Natasha’s special tea! Huh. If this is Red Room magic I’m just going to jump off the Tower.”

Hulk’s eyes are on him and Clint makes sure he smiles. He has no problem with the big green man; they’re nearly friends, as long as Clint catches his attention early enough in a fight that the Hulk’s still thinking rather than smashing. They’ve had a streak of fun battles, Clint on Hulk’s shoulder or in Hulk’s hair, picking off enemies from behind while the Hulk stomped and smashed their way forward. Clint doesn’t mind that the other guy’s a bit rough, or a bit clumsy, and he thinks Hulk’s sense of humor is almost as sharp as Bruce’s.

“Need puny Banner,” Hulk tells him, with a little distaste. “Need Iron Guy. Maybe spider. Maybe Red Lady.”

The Red Lady is Wanda, and since she and Pietro are off following a lead Rhodey found in Sokovia, Clint isn’t sure how he’d be able to get her here within the time loop parameters. But it’s a maybe. “How can you tell, big man?”

Hulk scoffs at Clint and crosses his arms. “Hulk resonate on different plane. Time magic feel like soap, smell like spider tea. Visible to Hulk eyes, like…” The Hulk pauses. “Like string. Wrap on Hawk Guy wrists. And ankles. And neck.”

Clint’s hand comes up to his neck, rubbing at it carefully, but he feels nothing. “I trust you, big guy.”

Hulk makes a growling noise that’s more comforting than it should be. “Tiny park monsters not alone,” he tells Clint. “Something give directions.”

“Yeah, it feels like that,” Clint says. “Hey, buddy, are you gonna remember this tomorrow when I wake up and repeat this day?”

“Not sure.” The Hulk frowns. “Hulk might. Banner won’t.”

Great. So Clint’s best chance at starting to get out of this loop involves somehow triggering the Hulk for a sensible science chat. Before the battle. And then getting Bruce to come back afterwards _and_ agree to help him. Seems a tall order.

“Make Banner help,” Hulk tells him, with another Lucky-like huff, as if he’d been reading Clint’s mine. “If we remember. Make puny Banner do numbers thing.”

Clint’s seen Banner do things with math he didn’t even know could be possible, but he still laughs at the Hulk’s description, because — yeah. Numbers thing. That’s what it looks like from his point of view, too.

———

It’s almost starting to get lonely, though, Clint thinks. Yeah, sure, he wakes up with Lucky licking his face every day, and he sees everybody that’s here in the Tower and he gets to fight with the team, but — no one _knows._ He hasn’t been talking about it to anyone - except the Hulk; that’s irony - and he’s been having fun fucking with all the rules he can, but… maybe, Clint thinks, maybe it’s time to start trying to figure out how to get out of this damn thing.

It doesn’t mean he has to stop having fun just yet — he’s sure it’ll take Tony and Bruce, well, a few days at least. There’s still plenty of room for entertainment, Clint Barton style.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaand here we go, halfway through!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5: Wine, Cheese, and Juice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yep, it's THAT. Sorry for the delay. I blame my murder husband.

“So,” Clint announces the next morning over the repeat of the coffee-pot scene, “I’m stuck in a time loop.”

“Yeah, and Trump won the presidency,” Tony says, sipping at his steaming hot mug and rolling his eyes. “Barton, come on.”

“I have been stuck in this time loop for, like, a month,” Clint tells him. “I flew your Iron Man armor. Thor _killed_ me. I…” He decides to leave his sexual escapades out of it, for the moment. “I’ve been enjoying it, but I figure maybe it’s time to start trying to break out.”

“Clint,” Nat says, her voice low, and Clint says once again: _“Budapest.”_

Steve looks over at Nat, who nods. Sam and Tony look to Steve, who looks at Clint for a long moment before nodding.

It’s at this point that Bruce speaks up, hovering around the edges of the kitchen as his tea brews. “The, uh,” he starts. “The other guy. He trusts it.”

Clint fistbumps in the air. “Aw, yeah, Hulk!”

Bruce’s eyes close and a hand comes up to briefly cover his eyes. “I don’t,” he says, and then adds, “why is he yelling _number thing_ at me, Clint?”

“Naw, we talked yesterday,” Clint says, incredibly stoked to have one person remember. “He wants you and Tony here to do the math.”

Tony gapes, glances back at Bruce, then stares at Clint. “The big green other guy knows, but you haven’t told us yet?”

“You don’t remember,” Clint says with a grin. “I’m telling you now.”

———

Clint is in a prison of his own making.

He’s down in the lab that Tony and Bruce share when they’re, for god’s sake, working _together._ He’s in a chair. Tony and Bruce are making terribly complicated notes by hand on a number of those strange force field boards Tony has available. Every now and then, the Hulk speaks out of Bruce’s mouth, which makes Clint shudder and Bruce make this odd tongue-curling expression like he just threw up a little. 

It is nowhere _near_ as cool as the days he’s had before. 

“So it’s a day,” Tony repeats, stabbing something that might be a marker and might just be StarkTech at the nearest screen board thing. “When does it reset?”

“Uhhhh.” Clint scratches at the back of his neck. “Like, midnight? Or whenever I wake up.”

“You haven’t tried staying up all night?” Bruce’s tone is kind, but he exchanges this look with Tony as if Clint’s being judged for something.

“I _like_ my _sleep,_ ” Clint tells them, more than a little insulted. 

Tony grins at Bruce. “Right, Hawkeye, that’s something to try if today rolls over again, alright? Just a thought.”

“And you said things are, well.” Bruce adjusts his glasses, his throat working as if he’s trying to keep the Hulk from claiming it. “Evolving?”

“Yeah.” Clint shifts. “At first it was literal same morning, alright, same Steve and Sam in their sweaty shirts and their morning dialogue, same _you_ coming in to yell at the coffee pot. Same fight with the fucking creatures in the Park, later.” Tony gives him a _look_ and Clint just sighs. “You’ll see.”

Suddenly, Bruce’s face twists somewhat uncomfortably, and the Hulk yells, “What about tomorrow!”

Clint yells, “Hi, buddy!” as Bruce opens his mouth and makes that terrible face again. 

“Tomorrow,” Tony says, drumming his fingers on the board Clint still isn’t even sure is real. “What about tomorrow?”

“Oh.” Clint shrugs. “How are we gonna remember this tomorrow?”

“Well,” Tony says.

“Um,” says Bruce.

Clint puts his face in his hands. “Shit.”

———

He’s left the science brothers to go figure out how in the world they can reserve information against a time loop they haven’t even figured out yet, because Clint Barton has a lovely Clint Barton plan, and he needs Nat’s help. He’s not spending his _entire_ time over the next few days in a _chair._ This is still his time loop to have fun with as he wants.

He finds her, surprisingly, hovering in the hallway outside his room. “I was worried,” she tells him, a hand cupping his face. “Are you alright?”

Clint grins down at her. “Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Mostly. I mean, I’m close to wanting out of this.”

“Close?” Nat looks at him; her expression is, as always, layers upon layers. Clint knows she’s been through a number of protocol for this kind of thing: the Red Room’s, her own, SHIELD’s, STRIKE’s, the Avengers’, and probably a number of others she’d downloaded for some light evening reading. Nat’s a professional. But she’s also his best friend, and Clint really wants to do something _fun,_ something he also wants Nat to enjoy - even if she can’t remember - and something that is far more likely to happen if he shows up with Nat at his side than if he shows alone.

He explains the plan to her. At first, she just glares at him, but then it sinks in, and her face turns pensive, then a bit amused, then darkly amused and somewhat giggly aside, and then she grins up at him and Clint’s reminded that he loves her partially because she’s as much of a rule-breaker and trouble-maker as he is. 

“Alright, then,” Nat says, and Clint sighs in relief even as his grin spreads across his own face.

“We’ll need to bring supplies,” he tells her. “So here’s where Tony keeps the premium booze, I’ll lift that, but I need you to head to this room and pick up something else…”

———

By the time they get to their destination Tony’s tried to get to Clint fourteen times, both by text and by wrist comm. Natasha’s simply ignoring hers; Clint has replied _What?_ and _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ a number of times just because he knows Tony’ll get even _madder_ about it. It’s like the icing on a cake he’s hoping is going to be worth it. Besides, he can rile Tony up at the moment; he knows Tony’s smart enough to understand that attacking the new SHIELD base - known to only a few and based on the remains of half of a Helicarrier - is a really, really bad idea when done just for petty revenge.

He and Nat make it there quickly, and swipe the cards they aren’t supposed to have according to Avengers bylaws to let themselves in - they love their team, they really do, but they’re _dumb_ if they think Clint and Natasha would ever give up any kind of advantage for team cameraderie - and Nat’s quick scan of the computer tells her that all three of them are in their offices, which is exactly what Clint was hoping for.

He hoists his duffel bag over his shoulder and gestures for her to lead the way; she gives him a demure nod and a not-demure-in-the-slightest grin as she ducks through the door.

There are SHIELD agents outranking them both that don’t know the way to Fury’s office. This is true for a number of reasons, namely because they don’t register as SHIELD agents anymore. Clint and Nat are listed as Avengers, of course, but they also have sub-level permissions they don’t acknowledge in situations less critical than actual do-or-die — or, in this case, for a moderate time loop that Clint wants to fuck with. 

As such, they make it through the halls with tacit approval, and if Fury’s already watching the door as they swipe themselves in, that’s cause Fury’s a cold hearted bastard who has everything on loop and is also probably some kind of goddamned psychic besides.

“Barton,” he greets them. “Romanoff. Who’s dead.”

Clint sets down his duffel bag; it clinks. Fury frowns at it. Seeing this, Natasha sets down her own pack, making sure it clinks even more.

“What the hell is this.” Fury stands up behind his desk, and Clint can tell he only hasn’t shot them because they used their proper ident cards to swipe into his office.

“Protocol four-D twenty-four article one,” Natasha tells him, and leans back against the wall.

Fury’s frown grows both in depth and intensity. “Which one of you?”

Clint waves. “Me, sir. Twenty-four hour reset time, no memory for anyone else, and for me, all I remember is that I’m in a time loop.” It’s a slight lie. No, it’s a blatant lie, and Clint would feel bad about it except that he really, really doesn’t. “Based on observation article one is absolutely applicable — anyone who engages with me within the twenty-four hour time frame has no permanent effects from anything that happens within the loop.”

“Proof?” Fury’s leaning against his desk, now, arms crossed across his chest. 

“Plenty,” Clint says. “Most importantly, though. Nat didn’t know until today, although I’ve told her plenty of times in the loop.” Her eyes widen, a bit, but he just glances at her and then back to Fury. Fury’s frowning in thought; he knows Natasha well, knows what she knows, usually trusts her judgment.

“Agent Romanoff,” Fury says, and she gives him this broken little nod — the one that means she’s already tried Clint out, she’s already searched for the weak points, and it’s this kind of thing that will make or break their story.

SHIELD agents have to be at an obscenely high level - a level only a few actually survive long enough to reach - to understand Protocol Four-D: the rulebook regarding time travel in general. Article One applies to a time loop, and there are subheadings spelling out each kind of time loop, each with a set of guiding principles to help agents free themselves from those kinds of spells.

Protocol Four-D-Two, however, is a protocol that isn’t delegated by rank or role or anything; you’re only let into it by another SHIELD agent who knows about it. Protocol Four-D-Two is also known as the Paradox Rule, which might have a million different applications but basically spells out that in the case of a time loop or some other kind of time travel that will end up resetting certain actions no matter what, SHIELD agents affected by the Four-D are free to say _fuck this_ and proceed to the nearest bar as soon as possible.

That, well: _that’s_ the protocol that Clint’s hoping Fury will invoke on their behalf.

———

An hour later, Clint’s absolutely buzzed on his way to absolutely loaded, and everything is moving along according to plan. 

Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and Phil Coulson are all sitting on the floor of Phil’s office. Natasha’s leaning up against Clint’s choulder, warm and satisfied. In between them are at least nine bottles of Tony’s best liquor, the kind he keeps for special occasions and when he wants to try to get into Steve’s pants. I t’s all so top shelf Clint hasn’t even heard of the brand names, although Natasha seems to recognize some of them. Coulson, of course, knows not only the names but the type and the flavors to expect from each one. 

Between them is a deck of cards. They’ve just been doing shots - Tony’s top shelf liquor is probably screaming in shame at being wasted so - and it looks like SHIELD’s founding members are on their way to the most expensive alcoholic obliteration they’ve ever felt.

(Clint and Natasha have only been part of a Four-D-Two once before, when Phil was their handler and he got himself stuck in some kind of time travel thing. He’d bought out a liquor store with his SHIELD platinum card and told them to go forth and be terrible. They were surprised the next day when _they_ remembered and Phil didn’t, but that’s just what time fuckery is like, and honestly that was probably the best way it could have ended anyway.)

They’re playing a game. No one’s really sure of the rules. It’s a combination drinking game, hand of poker, and truth-or-dare type of thing. Fury’s holding seven cards. Clint has one. Everyone has a full glass in front of them, their favorite liquor up to the top, drinking neat or on the rocks.

_I don’t know what you’re doing with all that booze but I’m going to kill you for not inviting me,_ Tony’s text buzzes into Clint’s mobile. Clint replies _new phone who dis_ and sets it face-down on the carpet.

“Okay,” Maria says with just a bit of a waver to her voice. Maria’s holding it the best, surprisingly; Phil’s already red-cheeked and giggly, and Fury’s stopped frowning, which means he’s far more gone than he wants to admit. “It’s my turn, and I’m going to do a penalty drink and pick up four cards for my hand.”

“Right.” Natasha’s nodding, vigorously, as if she has any idea what the rules are. There are no rules. This might be the actual funniest thing Clint’s done on this time loop. 

Maria downs a really big gulp of _Papa de la Casa de Playa,_ whatever the fuck tequila that might be, and then picks up what looks like a handful of cards. Next to her, Phil’s giggling, trying to carefully build his hand of five into a structure on the carpet. Maria glances at him, says, “Focus, Phil,” and lays down three sevens.

Clint stares. Natasha stares. Are they now playing Rummy?

“Dammit,” Fury says, and takes a giant drink of his _Capsicum Annuum de Domo in Litore_ four hundred and whatever year old scotch, as if he’s doing a penalty shot based on Maria’s cards. “Drink, Phil.”

Phil giggles and chugs the last of his _Ziemniak z Domu na Plaży_ fancy ass vodka and makes one of those _aahhhhhh_ sounds toddlers make after drinking water. “Whose turn is it?”

Clint and Natasha glance at each other. Natasha’s smile is hovering around her mouth, meaning she’s only seconds away from bursting out with laughter. Clint wishes he could record this for posterity’s sake. No one will ever believe this happened.

“Yours.” Maria wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “Draw two, four if you do a penalty shot.”

Phil extends his glass with a sad pout. Natasha takes pity on him and fills it up with vodka again, topping hers off. Clint’s sticking with the good old _Potato’s Beach House_ bourbon. He has no idea what the name is from and doesn’t care. It’s fucking delicious.

Phil drinks, longer than he should, and then very carefully selects four cards from the pile (which is, by now, just a pool of cards that are mostly face-down). He grins up at Clint, and starts cautiously adding them to his card house. He’s already on the second level; it’s impressive.

“Your turn, hot stuff,” says Phil, as he looks up at Clint.

Clint nearly swallows his tongue. Drunk Phil is one (amazing; hilarious) thing. Drunk Phil hitting on him? This is _gold._

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Four-D-Two.” Phil pronounces it very carefully. “I always wanted to try it. Just to see if you’d flirt back.”

Of fucking _course_ Clint’s gonna flirt back. This is the greatest thing in the history of things. He gives Phil the slow smile he sometimes uses at bars and it makes his fucking life right there when Phil’s blush deepens across his cheeks and he has to look away.

“Jesus fucking wept,” Fury says, although his mouth has loosened up enough that he might actually smile in the next two hours; he must be plastered. “Keep it in your pants, Cheese.”

“Oh, hush up, Juice,” Maria says. “I for one am very interested in this flirting and would like to encourage it by whatever means necessary.”

“I’m not interested,” Natasha adds, her words slurring _only a bit_ , “but I would also like to encourage it, just because I can.”

“Don’t make me,” Fury is saying, his mouth working over something. “Don’t. Wine. Don’t.”

“The fuck are these names?” Clint asks, although he’s giving Phil bedroom eyes as he says it. 

“It’s your _turn,_ Hawkeye.” Maria throws a card at him. Clint picks it up and puts it in his hand, because why not? “Penalty drink!” Maria yells, and he takes a sip of the bourbon, making sure Phil can watch his throat as he swallows. Phil, being the flatterer he is, absolutely watches.

“So,” Clint starts, because he has no idea what game this is and while he doesn’t want to lose focus on Phil, he also wants this story. “I’m going to, uh, take a big penalty drink, and then call. Call Fury. Truth or Dare, sir.”

Fury sets his cards down and gives Clint the stare that used to make a younger Hawkeye think he was about to be thrown off the Helicarrier. Drunk, it isn’t quite as impressive.

“Pick Dare,” says Maria. “We haven’t had anyone streak across the cafeteria in months.”

“Streaking?” Natasha’s smile has come out in full force and the lightest blush of pink is sitting high on her cheekbones. Clint’s so glad she’s having fun. He’s glad everyone’s having fun. This was a great plan. Tony’s booze is _sooo_ good.

“You have a better idea?” Maria challenges.

Nat shrugs. “Lock him in the bay with a paperclip and open the door? See if he can beat Phil’s time?”

“I am the champion,” Phil points out, waggling a finger somewhere in the air. “Did you know that?” He turns to Clint. “I am the escape _champion._ ” Phil waggles his eyebrows, as if this is supposed to be sexy. It’s actually incredibly endearing and cute.

Clint winks at him, then turns back to Fury. “I called. Show your cards, truth or dare.”

Fury’s mouth wrinkles up, as if it’s trying to remember how to do the frown that makes young cadets occasionally pee their pants a little bit. “Truth,” he says, finally, like he’s making a proclamation.

“Ask him what the J stands for,” Maria hisses.

Fury’s frown somehow turns itself in a twist, moving around his face like an unhappy caterpillar. 

“I wanted to know about the nicknames,” Clint tells her.

“It’s related,” says Phil, with this big splitting grin that actually makes Clint wanna reach out and touch his face, so he does. Phil ducks his cheek into Clint’s fingertips and smiles like he’s besotted. It’s great.

Fury has his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m not going to tell that story,” he starts, and then his mouth finally smooths out. “But I won’t stop it from being told… if Barton takes the full penalty.”

“What’s the penalty?” Clint asks, already eager to do it. 

Fury slides his glass over next to Clint’s, then looks around, pensively, and adds Natasha’s glass in line for what seems like no reason at all. “That’s the penalty,” Fury says.

———

They’ve taken a short break from the card game - Phil, happily using their discarded hands to add a balcony and a garden onto his card house, is elated - and Natasha’s handing out waters along with refills. Clint, in true Barton fashion, had managed to down all three penalty glasses in a row, but then had to lie on the floor for a while and tell them in great detail about how the ceiling was spinning. He suspects his head might have ended up in Phil’s lap for a bit, which is absolutely fine (although he’s not an idiot; he’s not taking advantage of Phil in this state, although it _does_ give him an idea of what he’s going to do during _tomorrow’s_ time loop). Once he stopped speaking whatever combination of Russian, English, and pidgin Swahili was coming out of his mouth, Natasha had unpaused the game. 

It’s story time. 

Fury’s double-fisting his scotch and his water, with the determined look of someone who doesn’t trust that he won’t remember any of this tomorrow due to time tomfoolery and wants to make _sure_ he’s killed off those particular brain cells. Maria has settled herself, leaning up against the couch, full glass in her hand. She’s the obvious storyteller; Phil just continues to swing his attention between the card house, Clint, and Natasha, lighting up each time he focuses on something else like it’s a surprise and a gift.

“Okay,” Maria announces, and yeah it’s a bit loud, but Maria did like four shots while Clint was lying on the floor worshipping the ceiling tiles, so whatever. “So.”

Clint watches as Fury rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead and then methodically takes a sip of scotch, a sip of water, just like he’s been doing for a while. 

“When SHIELD started, we were all in the shits,” Maria says.

“Like what shits,” Natasha says, mumbling a bit of it, and _wow_ she must really trust Clint because in any kind of real-life scenario she’d never be this drunk around anyone else. “How bad the ...the shits.”

“Big shits,” Phil intones in this really deep voice, and both Maria and _Fury_ absolutely crack up into giggles like they’re five year old schoolchildren. 

“It was,” Maria states, and waves her hand around like she’s looking for some kind of big proclamation to make, some statement that will resolve all of the disagreements of humanity, and as her hand comes back to rest on her glass she says, disappointingly, “hard.”

Clint snorts. “Hard.”

“It was,” Fury says, accent pulling out even more vowel from each word. “So hard.”

Clint snorts again. This time, Natasha joins him.

“The three of us,” Maria announces, and she’s starting to slide down the wall so what can Clint do except go insert himself there?, between Maria and Phil, and the way both of them immediately collapse into his shoulders makes him feel like a piece of meat but, like, in a _good way._ “It was like, hard, okay? So we would get together for _drinking nights._ ”

“Yeah,” Phil chimes in from where his face is planted into Clint’s bicep. “Wine, cheese, and crackers, and we’d rotate.”

“Wait a second,” Natasha says, and after a long pause while everyone waits for her to say something intelligent, she instead says, “okay,” and slumps down across Phil’s lap so that Clint can play with her hair. Wow, this is nice.

“Except,” Fury adds, and everyone is silent while they wait for Fury to decide whether he’s going to contribute or shut the story out. Fury chugs down his entire glass and gestures for more, which Maria is happy to get for him. “It started bein’ nicknames, and look at it. Maria was Wine, Phil was obviously Cheese, but… who’s gonna call the black guy Cracker?”

Clint snorts, and Natasha snorts, and Phil makes some kind of noise that might have been a snort but ends up being this terribly embarrassing hoot - not that Phil has any kind of dignity right now, his head is in Clint’s lap right next to Nat’s, and Clint’s having the time of his life splaying his fingers into massaging their skulls - but it’s all okay because Fury and Maria are laughing too.

“So wait, how did he get Juice?” Clint asks, and he absolutely isn’t prepared for the way that Phil and Maria both just burst out in horrifically deep, drunken laughter, and Fury’s actually _blushing_ a bright red Clint can see from the other side of the room. 

Natasha works her way upright, slowly, gradually pressing herself up like it’s the world’s most complicated yoga move. “Wait,” she says again, and this time she manages to raise a hand, pointing at Fury. “Wait. ‘S your… is your middle name Juice?”

Phil and Maria both lose it again. Phil is rocking on his back on the floor like an upside-down bug, and Maria is sprawled half across Clint’s thigh, her legs nearly at a right angle across the floor, shaking with laughter. 

“It is!” Phil howls, curling up like a pill-bug, facing Fury. Fury has, in fact, emptied his glass. He is now drinking from the bottle, somehow managing to give the rest of them stink-eye while he guzzles down Tony Stark’s finest. 

“What the _fuck,_ ” Clint manages to say. He can’t help from giggling. He’s that level of drunk where everything’s so fucking funny that he doesn’t even have to know what the joke is; Phil laughing is funny enough for days and days of absolute mirth. 

“So how far have you broken into SHIELD files, Romanoff?” Fury’s voice is still that level, serious boom. The effect is entirely undone by the fact that Fury’s now somehow on top of Phil’s desk, his head kind-of hanging off the end. “How many levels of our secrets have you dug up?”

“It’s cute you think you have secrets,” Nat tells him, and Clint goes back to playing with her hair. It normally makes her purr like a cat.

“So,” Maria starts, then starts chuckling again. Once she gets control of herself again: “So. When SHIELD started we all had to pick our names. Full names. Middle names.”

Something about this prickles a little at the edges of Clint’s drunken attention, but he lets it ride. “Cool. C’n I change mine?”

“Come by Monday for the paperwork,” Phil slurs at him, smiling from the floor. “What day is it?”

“An’ Fury wanted a good middle name. He wanted to represent what had started the, y’know, what would be the Avengers Initiative, right?”

“Captain Marvel,” says Natasha, and Clint resolves to check in with her the next time this time loop resets to figure out what the hell she’s talking about.

“Yeah, except…” Maria’s got her hand at her mouth now, trying to stop the laughter. “The cat’s tag says _Goose,_ and. And.”

“And Fury’s drunk enough…”

“...He decides to pronounce the G as a soft G…”

Phil and Maria are giggling like children and while Fury has turned his face to the ceiling, it looks like he might also be laughing.

“Are you,” Natasha says. “Wait.” The room stills (except the giggling) for a time while Nat stares at the ceiling, eyes wide open. “Oh. Are you _fucking_ serious?”

“He’s trying to spell it, right,” Phil says.

Maria butts in. “An’ we all get confused.”

“Are you telling me the J stands for J-o-o-s-e?” Natasha spells, in a rare moment of controlled sobriety, and Clint absolutely loses it.

“Yes,” Maria hoots! “Yes!”

“Wine, Cheese, and Joose,” Phil Coulson says with a smile, and promptly passes out. 

Clint’s curled up on the floor, his stomach _aching_ from laughing, he’s pretty sure he spilled his last drink in Natasha’s hair, oh, god, what is _happening,_ is any of this _real,_ and oh, god, for fuck’s sake he hopes the time loop happens because he hasn’t had this much to drunk in like fourteen thousand year and he does NOT want hangover at this level, nope nope NO _PE_ , Toney Stank’s liquor is almost gone is that bad?, an d Tasha looks so _pretTy_ rolling around on the flor her hair is everywhere and it might be spin her e but Clint is juts kind of. Happy? And a littel confuSed case Phil is here and is tat Fury snore on the desk maybe he just lies here and, and adn and

———

Clint jerks awake at the sound of his alarm and his heart is _pounding_ , for whatever reason, but he fumbles for his phone and Lucky leaps up onto the bed to snuffle at his chin and _fuck_ but even the memories are coming in spurts and he’s so fucking glad that he isn’t hung over.

He sprawls in bed. Fury. _Joose._ Maria. _Phil,_ oh for fuck’s sake, _Phil._ Everything.

“Worth it,” Clint chortles, and leaps out of bed to go and get his coffee.


	6. Chapter 6

“How the fuck are we going to _remember it,_ though?” Tony’s running his hands through his hair, absolutely messing it up and making it stand on end, and Clint kind of appreciates the look; Tony looks _good_ when he’s a bit sloppy, a bit shaggy—

“Clint,” Steve snaps. Steve is a new addition to these meetings. Steve is not a helpful addition, Clint thinks, because Steve keeps them on task rather than letting Clint make jokes and be dumb. Steve is just like this.

“I don’t fucking _know,_ Steve.” Clint shrugs, waves his hands, sighs. “The only one of you who remembers is the Hulk.”

“Who hates math,” Bruce says from where he’s laid out on a couch, ice pack pressed between his eyes and his legs elevated. “Hates numbers, hates Banner, isn’t going to remember anything for us.”

“Right. What lasts between time loops, again?”

“Told you,” Clint whines. “I don’t know. Not clothing, or um, lack of clothing, not notes or anything I bring to bed, uh, not being drunk either. No hangovers. Ha!”

Tony and Bruce start muttering about particle entanglement theory. Clint’s too busy making a to-do list for himself, because this is the beginning of the end, and as excited as he is to get out of this mess he wants to make sure he’s done everything he needs. Rob a bank. Stalk each Avenger and prove he could actually kill them from 300 yards without any of them knowing. Phil. Saving the world in a blanket cape. Maybe Thor again.

“Hawkeye,” Tony’s yelling, “are you listening?”

“Thinking about Thor’s butt,” Clint tells him happily, and Tony and Bruce both ban him from the workshop.

———

“Just take pictures,” Steve says, and chugs his water bottle like the idea it as perfect as his stupid abs. Why hasn’t Clint tried to sleep with Steve yet? Oh, that’s right. The metal-armed shadow that tends to linger around like Steve’s got a second set of arms. Super-soldier indeed. (Hell, Clint thinks, he’d volunteer to tag-team them - Barnes is _hot_ in that devastated hot hobo kind of way - except that then he’d probably get shivved, and he knows for a fact now that dying _hurts._ )

(Shit, why isn’t this the kind of time loop he has some kind of control over? Not being able to entertain the Roaring Twenties will go down in Clint’s book as a regret. Although, he thinks, if it takes Tony and Bruce long enough to figure this loop thing out, he might as well try. Right? Right? What’s dying, right?)

“Okay, Steve,” Clint retorts, probably five minutes after Steve stopped waiting for a response. (He can’t _help_ his brain.) “I’m sure pictures will carry over, like every single note I’ve tried to get Tony and Bruce to write to themselves so that future-them has any idea _what the fuck they’re talking about._ ”

“Oh.” Steve looks chastened. How does Captain America fucking do that? “But have you tried an actual camera?”

“Bro,” Clint tells him, clapping a hand on his shoulder (and maybe copping a feel, he would never admit it to a jury of his peers, because they’d never convict him for it), “if JARVIS can’t figure out how to store notes in case of a time loop, no fucking camera is going to be able to do so.”

Steve, to Clint’s surprise, leans into the gesture. (What is this! Does he have a chance?) “I’m sorry you’re going through this, Clint. It must be really lonely.”

Clint pauses to think about all of the fucking _fun_ he has had on this time loop. Getting to spar as if he isn’t just a weak human man. Watching Natasha eat two entire containers of ice cream. Enthusiastic consensual sex he’d never actually go for in real life because _feelings_ and _self-esteem._ Flying the armor. _Joose._

“Yeah,” he admits, because that’s all pretty awesome, but Clint in the end is a people person. “A bit.”

———

The next day none of the notes, photographs, or files in JARVIS’ memory transfer over, and Clint decides to take a break and head on over to SHIELD HQ again.

He tosses himself over the couch in Phil’s office, making sure to arrange himself in the best possible angles, dimming the lights to be the most flattering, and then waits for Phil to return. It’s only a couple minutes.

Phil rolls his eyes, but Clint is watching more carefully now, and he sees Phil swallow roughly as he turns away. “Hawkeye. I’m not your handler any more, you know?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t stop in for old times’ sake,” Clint replies, trying to be seductive, and he watches Phil’s throat move again before Phil puts on his handler-face and sighs.

“What do you need, Barton?”

Clint doesn’t really believe it’s this easy. “Well, sir, honestly? I’m stuck in a Four-D Two, although I’m working my way out of it, and I sort of thought I would, uh, try my luck.”

Phil raises an eyebrow, obviously not really picking up what Clint’s trying to throw down here.

Clint shrugs, making sure to show off his shoulders. “I mean, what’s the worst? You say no, nothing happens, wake up tomorrow not remembering it. I thought it was worth a try.”

“Barton,” Phil says. Judging by the flush down his throat, Phil is absolutely getting it this time. “You can’t just — this isn’t protocol.”

“There isn’t a lot of protocol for a Four-D-Two,” Clint tells him. He doesn’t want to push too far - that isn’t the kind of memory he wants here - but he’s just curious, now, having seen a drunk Phil admit to the same. “Everything back to normal. Tomorrow.”

Phil swallows and this time it’s obvious, rough, the lines of his throat working in a way Clint suddenly wants to lick. It isn’t _that_ surprising - Clint’s always had a major competence kink, and seeing as Phil Coulson was his earliest role model in terms of not only competence, but honor with it, Clint’s always had a bit of a weakness - but it is a little surprising the way it just starts burning low in his belly at the thought of reaching out, tasting at it with his tongue. 

“How do I know it’s a real Four-D-Two?” Phil asks, and his voice is so casual and even, so obviously stable, that it throws Clint for a loop. What has been in Phil’s head all these years?

He throws his hands up, suddenly a bit stung. “Why would I make this up? You and me, Phil, we’re dynamite, we’re potent, we are _solid._ No way I’m going to come along and… throw some kind of wrench into our works without a good reason.” 

Suddenly Clint’s worried that there’s something he isn’t understanding; Phil has some kind of lingering guilt, or lingering _feelings,_ something he’s reading really, really wrong—

“Are you sure?” Phil asks. His voice is grave, but his eyes have grown dark and his gaze on Clint feels oddly heavy.

Clint shrugs. He needs to see this through at this point. “Yeah, man, I’m sure.”

He isn’t expecting the way Phil’s face sort of sets in that _mission focus_ sort of way. He isn’t expecting to find that as fucking hot as it is. He really isn’t expecting Phil to take two steps across the room, yank him up by his shirt, and take over his mouth like he’s in charge of Clint all over again. 

He probably should have expected, but he didn’t, and somehow that _really_ turns him on.

Phil backs him up against the desk. Clint’s taller, but Phil’s so obviously in charge, and Clint lets it happen; Phil’s tugging at his shirt, then gets a hand into his hair roughly, his other hand yanking Clint’s shirt out of his pants. Clint’s equally handsy, unbuttoning Phil’s shirt, yanking it from his trousers, finding soft skin with surprisingly solid muscle underneath.

It’s a mess, which is also surprising, but good, _so_ fucking good. Clint ends up on his knees, Phil’s hands in his hair, learning the taste and shape and feel of Phil’s cock with his tongue and his mouth; and after Phil comes down his throat he ends up shoving Clint down on his back on the floor and swallowing Clint’s cock so enthusiastically Clint comes embarrassingly fast with the tip of his dick nudging at Phil’s throat, and Phil hum-moaning around him as if he’s coming a second time.

They lay sprawled across the floor, half-propped against each other, breathing hard. 

“Really,” Phil says finally, “I’m not gonna remember that?”

Clint laughs, and laughs, and reconsiders some of his life choices.

———

“Okay, Clint, this time we’re gonna put the notes inside your clothing,” Tony tells him.

Clint rolls his eyes. “It isn’t. Gonna. Fucking work.”

Bruce actually sighs, taking his glasses off and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “It probably isn’t, Tony. We’ve tried before. We need another idea.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “We need to come up with a code that we’ll understand tomorrow, but that’s simple enough that Hulk and Hawkeye can remember enough to quote it back.”

“Tony,” Clint says, remembering getting his GED by the skin of his teeth. “I am not good enough at math for this.”

“You don’t have to be good at math,” Bruce realizes slowly, “but you’re good at memorizing things. You remember briefings, passwords, codes. You can do that.”

“I guess,” Clint says, having never really thought about it — but it’s true; so much of his SHIELD training, plus the training he exchanged with Natasha, has been learning to memorize things: to stamp impressions of rooms and documents into his mind, to be able to quote conversations verbatim. He wasn’t just a SHIELD agent, he’d been a spy and an assassin as well, and — well, maybe Bruce was right.

“So Tony and I just have to think up some kind of code that you can recreate for us tomorrow,” Bruce continues, glancing over at Tony. “Something that’ll give us a head start.”

“Right,” Tony says, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “A secret code for future-Tony to decipher. Sure, Hawkeye, we’re on it.”

———

Clint finishes his recreation of the weird squiggly number-letter catastrophe Tony and Bruce had presented him with, and then turns around to grin proudly. “So you left me with that,” he says, and then changes the color on Tony’s holo-pen to an incredibly obnoxious neon purple. “And this, which you said was the key.”

He writes it out carefully: _A = 15, 1 = -20, 4 amps = 24 hours = 4.235E6 joules._

There’s a long moment of silence while all of them stare at the holo-screen, and then Tony says, tentatively, “was I drunk?”

Bruce murmurs, “Those aren’t even consistent _units._ ”

“In what goddamned case does one equal negative twenty?” Tony throws his hands up in the air. “Did we do cocaine last night, Hawkeye? Because I’m going to be really sad if I missed you high as fuck, I bet you’re hilarious.”

“It’s a _code,_ ” Clint repeats, “and past-you said you’d be able to figure it out by noon.”

“Okay,” Bruce starts. “If we’re saying amps are hours are joules, then we’re talking about energy over time and current as ...both. If it’s a time loop…”

Tony turns to him, picking up on something. “Current and time, right, okay, so electromagnetism is involved, right. The fuck is with A = 15? Some alphabetical code?”

“Did A mean the letter A or amps?” Bruce demands, spinning around to face Clint.

“Oh my god,” Clint says, “do you think I have any idea what that even means?”

“That is a lot of fucking joules,” Tony says conversationally. “Not like, overall, but as something we would throw in here as part of the code?”

“I’m leaving,” Clint announces.

———

“Good fight,” Steve says, his voice carrying over the sound of the showers; each one is walled off, but Steve has taken the one next to him, right up close. Clint’s really been working this one, although he isn’t going to be sad if he doesn’t get there: this is more for fun than anything else.

“I’m telling you,” Clint says, “this time loop has given me some really cool abilities here. I really think I’m learning.”

“You’re fighting incredibly intuitively,” Steve tells him over the wall. “You’ve absolutely picked up on something, Hawkeye, I’m impressed.”

It isn’t intuition, it’s repeated weeks of watching Steve fight and learning his quirks and his patterns, but Clint isn’t going to say that. “Thanks, Cap, that means a lot,” he says instead. 

He doesn’t think he has _any_ chance of getting Captain America in the sack, but he figures it’s worth an old college try anyway.

“Tell me about it,” Steve says, surprising Clint, as Steve’s shower stops. “I’m curious, Clint; I’ve had a bit of time fuckery, but nothing like this.”

“Well.” Clint’s done, so he turns his own shower off and wraps the towel low around his hips. As he emerges he _does_ catch Steve’s eyes trailing downward, which is interesting. He files that away. “It’s really a bit disconcerting, to be honest, every morning when I wake up and the same things happen over and over.”

“I — I know I can’t really imagine,” Steve starts, and there’s something hesitant and vulnerable in his voice, which makes Clint look over. His eyes get stuck on Steve’s pecs - which he absolutely cannot help - but then his eyes rise to Steve’s face, and there’s something real here. “But that first month I was here, I — I.” His voice stutters. “Every morning when I woke up it was the same goddamn dissonance, the repetitive motions, and even if I had different conversations, it all _felt_ the same.”

Clint suddenly swallows against a tight throat, because this is more vulnerable than actually seeing Steve naked. Had any of them thought about it — wait, no, they hadn’t even _known_ Steve then; they hadn’t all gotten together until the Battle of New York…

“I flew Tony’s armor,” Clint tells Steve, because he needs to make the other man smile. 

Steve’s eyes widen, and then he — laughs, a real laugh all the way down, and Clint thinks yeah, this is good.

———

“Need spider!” Hulk yells, and stamps on the floor.

“When the fuck did he show up?” Clint murmurs, trying his best to look non-threatening.

“Maybe a half hour ago,” Tony tells him out of the side of his mouth. “We thought we’d cracked the code and then all of a sudden Big Green comes bursting out to tell us we’re wrong, but instead he’s yelling about some goddamn chew toy.”

“Do you ever even listen to him?” Clint says then, standing up. “He wants Nat. Go get her.”

Tony stills, and then says, “I should have figured that out already. Shown up by Hawkeye.”

“Make a note, Jay,” Clint yells, although he knows it won’t outlast the time loop.

“Hawk Guy!” Hulk settles onto the floor, trying to sit cross-legged; it’s close. “Need spider, need spider!”

“On it, sir,” Jay says from the ceiling.

“I know, big man, but why?” Clint sits down on the floor across from the Hulk, and Tony joins him after a second.

“Sorry, bro,” Tony says, and the Hulk huffs at him. “I’ve been distracted trying to solve _five-dimensional physics_.”

“Spider knows key,” the Hulk repeats, and Clint just sighs.

———

The next morning, after his little speech, Clint also has a surprising announcement: “But look, I figured it out!”

He holds out his arm, on which he’s drawn a (pretty far from anatomically correct) dick, and then a smiley face, and then a blob with arms that was _supposed_ to be the Hulk but in the light of day Clint doesn’t think he’s going to admit to that. 

“Uh,” Steve says. Sam snickers. Tony glances over, says, “Oh, look, it’s my balls,” and then grabs the coffee pot from Clint while he’s distracted.

“Jesus,” Clint says. “If you write it on me, it’ll stay! So all you have to do is keep figuring it out, and then write it down before the day ends, we’ll be in a much better starting place.”

And as the dramatic flourish, he grabs the back of his tee and whips it off over his head. “And look, I’m an empty canvas.”

He catches a couple of interested looks, but Natasha’s groan at his joke is the best part yet.

“Let’s get to work,” Clint says.


	7. Chapter 7

Clint’s lying on the floor in Tony’s lab as Tony and Bruce both copy what’s scrawled all over his back into a collection of holo screens, babbling away in techno-math speaks as they do. Tasha’s sitting in lotus next to Clint’s head, hands in his hair, and occasionally Tony and Bruce will trace out an equation with their fingers along the skin of his back. Clint’s feeling like a well-pet cat at the moment, relaxed and smug, and if he knew how to purr he’d be doing it.

“I’m not sure why the Hulk wants me here,” Natasha murmurs. 

Clint shrugs, and Tony swats him. “Stay still, canvas.”

“It’s okay,” Clint tells him, “I know you’re distracted. It’s probably hard to concentrate with all of this _man meat_ on display.”

“If you call it man meat one more time I’m throwing you on the grill,” Sam yells. The other Avengers have been drifting in and out of the room; it’s the only interesting thing going on today until the attack this afternoon, which Clint has played like a chess game so many times that he’s pretty sure he could defeat it with Vision and a water gun.

“Are you helping, Wilson?” Tony drags an entire screen into another, watching as the equations on them iterate, spitting out something else into a third screen in front of Bruce. “Are you also a genius with a number of PhDs?”

Sam snorts. “I’m helping keep Barton’s damn ego in line.”

But something has pinged at the edges of Clint’s lazy consciousness. “Hold on,” he says, although he doesn’t move; Bruce is straddling the back of his thighs, making insanely tidy marks somewhere along his rib cage, and it’s very pleasant. “If we think this happened at the fight today…”

“What fight today?” Sam asks. 

Clint sighs. “Oh, yeah, aliens or something attack, I dunno, I’ve been dodging the fight for weeks now. Got better things to do with my time-loop time. But two-days-ago Tony theorized that maybe it was something in that fight that got on me, or into me, and that’s what started this.”

“I need readings,” Tony blurts out, and Bruce stands up, off-balance and stumbling.

“It isn’t a hard fight,” Clint says, “once you’ve been through it a million times. I could probably end the entire thing with three carrots and a handgun if you wanted.”

“I’m calling out the Iron Legion,” Tony says, and someone who sounds a lot like Sam Wilson groans, loudly and dramatically.

“Wait,” says Bruce, and Clint can hear him stumble again, and then the Hulk yells, “Spider! Need spider!”

He can feel, rather than hear, as Nat gracefully stands from her crossed-leg position up to her full height. “That’s what you want me to see?” She asks the Hulk, and Clint can hear that there’s almost a smile in her face.

“Hulk and spider,” the Hulk tells her happily - with Banner’s mouth, which Bruce can’t be happy about - “Go fight small things. Watch magic. Figure out stupid Banner math.”

Clint can’t help it; he starts laughing.

“Hulk,” Bruce yells in his normal tones, “be polite!”

“ _Hulk is not polite,_ ” the Hulk yells back. “Spider. Yes?”

“We’ll take Sam,” Nat says, “and _half_ of the Iron Legion, Tony, the entire thing is overkill, but that way you’ll get your recordings and read-outs, okay? And I’ll see whatever it might be that the Hulk wants to show me.” Clint can hear her breathe out, the small noise she makes in the place of a laugh. “Sorry, Bruce, but you’re not invited.”

———

Clint stays up late that night eating four pizzas. Well, that’s an exaggeration; Lucky had at least one piece off of each pie. He feels horrible, but he wanted to see what his actual limit was. Four pizzas, minus whatever a dog eats. Not bad. If only they can make it to the edge of the time loop without barfing, he’s going to consider it a win.

He’s tried a couple different nightly activities to see how the time loop itself works. Initially it registered right at midnight - standard rules for a time loop spell, although Clint has no idea who _set_ the rules in the first place - but as Clint’s gotten deeper into the loop, that has also changed. The first night he tried to stay awake, it was as if something snapped him to sleep at exactly 03:37, and he’d woken up to his own alarm like every other one of the time loop days. Other times he’s made it until 6AM before he finds himself waking up. He has no idea what the rules are. He’s stopped testing them since the time he’d been jerking off in the shower and the loop had rudely decided to toss him into bed, alarm blaring and Lucky standing on his suddenly-soft junk with his balls aching. It’s like the time loop has a sense of humor, or maybe it’s just a _dick._

Pun not intended.

Either way, Clint’s really, seriously, completely done with this in four hundred different directions. It’s still fun, sure, but he’d like to go steal the Iron Man suit _with Nat_ and have her _remember_ what it felt like to fly War Machine. (They’d done that the day previous, and Clint won’t ever forget how hard they’d laughed at the video call from Rhodey attempting to chew them out while Tony made “you deserve this” noises in the background.) It’s really about time to break out.

He’s made the most of it. Clint feels like out of all the Avengers, he’s usually the one that deserves a break the most. Everybody else has super skills or super tech or super powers; he’s just a dude with a bow and arrow. He’d earned his fun. And he’d had it.

———

“Bruce, darling, love of my life,” Tony says around the pen in his teeth, “I absolutely cannot read your fucking handwriting, can you come tell me what it says in Clint’s armpit.”

“This is a trick,” Bruce announces from across the room. “I am not coming to put my face in Hawkeye’s armpit.”

“It’s a double cross,” Nat replies, standing, “because that’s _my_ handwriting, and it’s in Russian.”

“Widow, this is a series of loops that makes a Slinky look tame.” Tony crosses his arms. “That’s you fucking with me.”

“It’s Russian cursive,” Nat says, smiling. “Look it up.”

“Please can no one put their actual face in my armpit,” Clint says, because he’s a little ticklish but doesn’t want to admit it out loud. He’d rather they think he’s sweaty than know he’s ticklish.

“Jay, Jarvis, my man, can you tell me what it says.” Tony sounds like he’s about to give up and start drinking by the bottle.

“Jesus, Tony,” says Nat, coming to stand next to Clint, lifting his arm up gently. “It says 6 seconds to plateau, for the record.”

“Why does Russian cursive look like the Hulk drew it with his toes?” Tony asks the world.

Natasha sniffs. “I’ll have you know I learnt to write Russian from the elites, thank you.”

“Elite armpits,” says Bruce, and then: “Six seconds until plateau, Tony, that’s an order of magnitude more than what we had—”

“Yeah,” Tony replies, “so our dampening coefficient needs to be corrected, okay, can we take this and solve for lambda again, except—”

“— with a second-order derivative, yeah, cause we’re going to have to hit that delay—”

“Can I leave yet?” Clint hollers, and a chorus of _No_ s rain down on him.

Clint groans, loudly and kind of lewdly, and then asks, “Can we at least get dinner?”

———

This particular day has been miserable - Tony and Bruce tripped over their own calculations, somehow, and the Hulk got fairly angry about it, and Tasha had to take the Hulk out to hunt the fucking invasion again to calm him down while Clint obediently scrubbed every single speck of ink from his body so that Bruce and Tony could start their notes all over again. He’s grumpy, which means he’s tired, and the last thing Clint needs literally six feet away from the safety of his own room is an odd shadow with a metal arm and too many knives descending silently from the vents to stand very still and stare at him.

Which, of course, is what happens. 

“Uh,” Clint says, when the Winter fucking Soldier just stands there, those pale eyes wide in his face as if he maybe hadn’t thought this through the whole way. “Um. Hi?”

The Winter Soldier - Bucky, Clint thinks, _Bucky_ \- is between him and his room. Clint isn’t necessarily unarmed because no, Natasha, he would never go anywhere unarmed, except that this time loop has been the same almost the entire time and basically what he has to work with is the mug he’s been drinking really gratuitously spiked hot cocoa from. It can be a weapon. Anything can be a weapon in the hands of the right person. He isn’t unarmed at all, no, thank _you_ Natasha Romanoff.

Bucky opens his mouth, then closes it, swallows, and opens it again. “Heard you were stuck in time.”

Turns out the Winter Soldier has a beautiful voice. It’s almost unfair. “Yeah,” Clint stammers, “fucking time loop, I dunno, it’s probably only been a month or two but it feels like a thousand years, man.”

Bucky stares at him, perfectly still. Clint really isn’t sure what to do. But then Bucky closes his eyes, swallows, and then says, “I’ve been there.”

“Time loop?” Clint can’t help his incredulous voice. “Bro, I mean, you’re the man out of time yourself, but — yeah?”

And the ominous feel of the Winter Soldier somewhat crumbles as Bucky - obviously _Bucky_ this time - shrugs, bringing up his right hand to rub at his metal shoulder. “Hydra wanted to experiment,” he tells the wall beside Clint. “I was there.”

“The _hell,_ ” Clint blurts out, suddenly offended by the notion — that’s a horrible trick to play on someone whose memory has already been torn up like shredded pork. “That’s disgusting.”

Bucky shrugs again, and Clint gets the feeling that it’s his response to a lot of things these days. “Just wanted to say,” Bucky starts, and then stops, his eyes fixing on something over Clint’s right shoulder.

Clint refuses to look. This poor man’s been through too much already; the least Clint can do is stand here and be stable for him. Instead, he focuses attention on Bucky’s face: gaunt, with cheekbones outlines in shadows, the start of scruff outlining a beard, his lips dry. _Fuck,_ he’s beautiful. 

Clint shudders when Bucky’s eyes flick back to him because he isn’t at all expecting it. “Might hurt when they pull you out,” the Winter Soldier tells him. “Don’t fight it.”

“Lovely,” Clint says sarcastically, but he — almost reaches out to touch Bucky’s arm, what the fuck is that other than a death wish. The gesture dies. “Thanks, man.”

Bucky’s mouth rebels as if he wants to smile but can’t remember how, and then suddenly, there’s no one in the hallway with Clint anymore.

———

_“BARTON!”_ Tony yells, leaping down from where he’s been working on some weird-ass extendable thing that looks like the light from a dentist’s chair. “We got it, man, or at least I _think_ we’ve got it, I take no responsibility for anyone else’s contributions, but I think this is our final model, baby.”

“Ew,” Clint says, because it looks like some weird thing that’s going to extend over his face as he lies back in a chair or on the floor or some other nasty thing. “Tony, this is terrible.”

“Nope,” Tony says happily, swinging along the contraption, bringing it down where he can happily tighten up some of the set screws. “This is going to _work,_ Hawk Guy, and you’ll be back to normal in a flash.”

“The Hulk agrees.” Bruce is over in the opposite corner, pacing as he tries to keep the Hulk from bursting out and, maybe, trashing everything. “He’s _really_ excited, Tony, can we get on with this?”

“Clint,” Nat says from the corner where she’s trying to soothe Bruce down. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Clint glances around. It shouldn’t be surprising that most of the team is here, watching him, but for whatever reason it is, and something chokes up in his throat. That’s absolutely unfair, so Clint swallows it and goes for swagger instead.

“Let’s roll,” he tells Tony.


	8. Chapter 8

The alarm goes off, that combination of vibration he can feel through the floor and the stupid shrill tone JARVIS had designed to hit his remaining frequencies just perfectly, and Clint swears his way through the alphabet as he fumbles for the mobile device.

It’s sitting right there on his nightstand, and he taps it twice to shut it odd without a snooze function. His hearing aids are sitting right next to it, and Clint grabs at them while sitting up, a bit clumsily, to put them in. 

Once they’re turned on he hears a snuffling at the door and calls out; Lucky pushes the door the rest of the way open, and comes to jump up on the foot of the bed, climbing into Clint’s lap to sloppily lick his face. 

_Well,_ Clint thinks. It’s hard to tell from here whether this is just a lucky repeat, or if he’s actually out. 

He puts on sweats and a t-shirt that must be Natasha’s (it says _Arson 4 Lyfe_ across the boob area) because if this really is the first day out of the time loop he’d like to have some clothes on, thanks. Although a respectable number of the Avengers have now _technically_ seen him naked — but Clint’s not thinking about that.

He heads into the kitchen. Tony’s standing by the coffeepot, glaring it down as it froths something, and he thrusts a full mug in Clint’s direction without looking.

Clint freezes.

He can’t help it. The relief is trickling down his back like warm water, and it’s keeping him in place, stiff and uncoordinated, clutching at the mug like it’s a lifeline. 

“Knew it would work,” Tony says, and flips the switch off, pouring what looks like perfectly steamed milk into the mug in front of him.

“I didn’t,” Clint says, dumbly, because he really hadn’t expected to feel this relieved about it. He’s suddenly aware of someone behind him, and then Nat’s hugging him around his torso briefly before she, too, moves to the coffee pot.

“That’s my shirt,” she tells him, and Clint’s so overwhelmed to know that he’s here today and she’ll remember it tomorrow that he walks over and tucks his chin over her head, which he can do because Natasha is tiny.

Steve and Sam burst in about them, and like always, Clint can’t help the look he gives them — especially now. Aw, hell, is he just gonna be horny for the team from now on? (Extra horny, that is. It isn’t Clint’s fault he’s constantly surrounded by incredibly attractive people.)

He’s surprised, though, at the concern and relief that crosses Steve’s face. “Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Clint breathes, smiling back. “I’m back, y’all.”

“Great.” Sam rolls his eyes, although he does clap his hand to Clint’s shoulder as he passes. “Lovely. Couldn’t go get lost in time or something?”

“Unfortunately he’s still Barton,” Tony announces, “but we think we’ve fixed the problem.”

“So,” Nat says, settling onto a stool at Tony’s breakfast bar. “How long were you stuck, Clint?”

Clint thinks. Fast. “Uh, maybe a week or two?” 

Tasha can tell he’s lying. It’s written all over her face: _Clint you dumb idiot I can see right through you._ But he just smiles at her. Nat might be the one person he’d tell about some of his adventures; she might be the only one who would appreciate them. (Or Bucky? Clint wonders whether the Winter Soldier has ever laughed.)

“What did you do the entire time?” Steve wanders over, sits next to Nat. 

Clint swallows. Weeks of having the time of his life: fighting everyone. Making out with everyone. Taking the armor, the tech, the tricks; getting drunk and never having to pay for it the next day. Honestly, it was like a little vacation, even though he’s incredibly glad to be back.

“Oh, not much.”

The little smile on his face might give him away, but Clint’s secrets are his, and he’s not telling yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD ITS FINALLY DONE _cries in 20,000 words lmao_
> 
> I got everything that I could from that initial discussion into this, and I hope y'all have thoroughly enjoyed the madness that is the Bad Decisions Buddies Discord. This is, of course, absolute crack, because I'm me. Thanks so much to Feathers and Sep for listening to me yell about this so much, and thanks BDBD for all the sprints!!! <3


End file.
